Blindness, she has learned, matters less in the air.
Massive violet wings snap in at the mare’s side as she dives along the sides of the cliffs, snapping them out to catch her only when she hears ocean spray thundering against the sharp rocks and feels the cool rush of droplets catching on her feathered coat. She spirals back up, then, wind whistling through her feathers. It isn’t quite like Virun to go cliff-diving; she is a rather delicate creature, not inclined towards an adrenaline rush or the nauseating jumps that her stomach makes when she crashes towards the open sea. Nevertheless, there she is,
free falling.
She wants to sit herself down on the cliffside, look herself firmly in the eyes (an ineffective but somehow amusing sentiment), and tell herself Virun, it is all going to be fine. If you would stop throwing yourself off of cliffs and instead direct your energy to summoning Celes, it would be better than fine, and faster. However, Virun knows that is a fool’s venture – she can’t feel the darkness, as she used to. It is blank and stale again. When she felt it, she could see into the other realm, the one that existed outside of sight; it was never the world in front of her, but she could make it into her world if only she asked her beloved companions. Now, there is no world but the one of which she has been robbed, the tangible, unseen world that pumps salt and sea into her lungs, a world that she can barely believe exists for her sightlessness. The sounds and the sensations are a disconnect. She can never quite piece together the puzzle, and- You’re thinking too much again, Virun.
So much, in fact, that she nearly cascades into the sheet of (presumably) sharp rocks when she takes the next fall; she feels her primaries brush against their jagged tips when she pumps her wings to pull herself back up again. Silly, silly Virun. This is why they never let you outside – you can’t take care of yourself at all, you know. Grimacing, she rides the wind back up to the cliff’s edge, ears twitched forward to try and pinpoint where land meets sky by nothing but the sound of the wind howling against rough stone. She swoops down, down, down, long legs extending as she nears what she thinks is the ground. (From where she hovers, she can hear wind whipping through grasses.) Tentatively, she outstretches a long limb, and, finding solid ground, comes in for an uneasy landing; you’ve forgotten how to live without them, haven’t you? (It wasn’t as though she’d ever spent much time outside without them, either.)
At some point or another, she knows that she’ll have to make her way back to the Court; it’s only her own stubbornness and need for independence that pulled her from it in the first place. (She can’t stand being confined any longer – she feels caged, like her wings have been clipped off, every moment she spends constricted by those old stone walls.) For now, however, she stands on the cliff’s edge, long hair billowing in the wind as she stares out towards where she imagines the ocean meets the sky with eyes that cannot confirm or deny her suspicions.
Hariel was a pseudo-parent. And not a very effective one. In the role of disciplinarian, especially, he was greatly flawed. While he slept, refusing to let the desert’s irritating heat rob him of a few more hours of rest, she had struck off again into the unknown. Now, sweat-glossed and more exhausted than before his nap, he was threading his way anxiously and meticulously across this new landscape in vain search of her impish figure. She had lulled him into a false sense of security, he decided. Clearly, she knew what she was doing and she had deliberately tricked him by behaving like a normal, appropriately attached child and hanging close to him for weeks - weeks - so that he would sleep soundly for once and she could escape.
Of course, that wasn’t exactly true… she had never been particularly concerned with following the rules he tried to establish. It was definitely not the first time he had woken up to find her footsteps leading him onward, the faint scent of primrose in her wake.
Hariel was large enough to deter most predators, and reasonably confident he could handle one that was desperate enough to pursue the tiny golden snack. These advantages, however, really only applied when she was within earshot. And now… now there were greater dangers. Horses, groups of horses, usually meant trouble. He had noticed the difference a few days ago; the unmistakable signs of other horses, of trodden paths, of engaged borders. He had said nothing to her, but she would have smelled them, as he did, last night as they drew nearer. Hariel had been planning to skirt around the whole place. He wasn’t sure what his reluctance was, exactly, but he had not intended to make himself – or the filly – known here. Obviously, she had had other plans.
He broke into an easy trot, scanning the sand with narrowed eyes. He didn’t really expect to spot her, and his gaze kept catching on figments rising from the heated dunes, but the adrenaline kept his sharp gaze on alert. Taking no more than a minute to catch his breath, restraining his eager feet with difficulty to give his eyes ample time to turn over each mirage that he spotted.
What was that?
He paused, hungry for any morsel, any break in the monotony of his search.
Voices.
He pushed onward.
Quite suddenly the Oasis opened up ahead of him. He halted abruptly, his feet sliding a little on the soft sand. Panting, Hariel turned to take in the full scope of his surroundings; the strangers, the (relatively) lush space, the decidedly unrelaxed atmosphere, for such a picturesque space.
The day was waning, the light was soft, but still the sun made itself felt. He stood before the Oasis in his silence and his glory, his unspoken dedication, his hidden motive. His stance was that of a man braced against the calamity of the next horizon; the tension in his body superseded only by the calm austerity of his features. His face betrayed skepticism (somewhere at the corners of the eyes), but otherwise was consumed with the grim sobriety of a newfound insight. The heavy, rapid beating of his heart was muffled by the forced stillness of his body. He watched them, unwilling as yet to commit himself to their company. Reluctance was in every line of his burnished body; and he felt keenly the weight of his skin.
He took a deep breath, and, struck out toward the nearest body on the Oasis. There was an imperceptible relaxation in the marble mask he was trying to hold up, and he grunted a greeting as he drew up to the other, just in case he hadn’t been noticed. “Excuse me,” he started, “I’m sorry to bother you, but, by any chance have you seen a little girl?” as he spoke the words he realized they might sound extremely strange. He tried to cover the weirdness by hurrying on “she’s somewhere around 6 months, shiny gold color. Looks nothing like me.” he added.
Nice. Well done. That makes you look much less creepy. The sarcastic tone in the back of his head was irritatingly familiar.
Notes: speech OOC: Happy to talk to whoever might be around!
The horizon is draped in gentle, dusty moonlight interrupted only by the brilliant lights of the Night Kingdom, easily mistaken for starlight from a distance. It is in this strange mingling of warm light and welcome darkness that a rapping comes at one of the windows of the palace. When the window is opened, it reveals a sleek, red-gold hawk with a message tied to one of her legs. She ruffles her soft feathers, golden eyes darting and alert as she examines whoever might approach her with a predator's intensity; she brings with her the unmistakable smell of desert sand, which might be anticipated. However, she also brings with her the fainter, but unmistakable, scent of blood and ash, and, most nauseating, burning flesh. She seems to finish her analysis of the individual who allowed her in, and, reluctantly, outstretches her leg to offer them the message. It is written on crisp, yellowed paper, emblazoned with a gold that catches the light and sealed with a wax emblem of the sun. The hawk takes flight, her job complete, and disappears into the darkness from which she came. The scent of death still lingers on the paper. In a crisp hand, a single word is written in neat hand beneath the seal: Reichenbach. When the seal is broken, it reveals a message ominous in its brevity; of the aroma of death and flame, after all, it says nothing.
"King Reichenbach,
Your sister and her newborn daughter should arrive at the borders of the Arma Mountains by tomorrow night. I have sent an escort to accompany them, but I suspect that you will not wish for her to encroach upon your kingdom, nor would I wish for someone inexperienced in traversing the perils of the mountainside to learn them while tasked with their protection. Both mother and child are healthy, though exhausted.
Congratulations on the birth of your niece.
- Seraphina"
☼ by popular request....
comes on the heels of this thread! worth noting that it's only been ~2 days since the Davke attack, so no one who finds it should know what's occurred in Solterra, yet. tagging @Reichenbach, but since I at no point actually mentioned this to you preemptively, anyone is free to find this little note if they so desire, ahaha - or they need not respond at all. ;D
The sun was glorious. It was golden and full and it loomed above the horizon like a pregnant peach, overripe with delicious splendour, spilling gold into the world. The nectar of it, the sweet ephemeral saffron-spun slivers of youth, could be tasted on the summer breeze. From this seamless fabric slipped, solid and chimerical, the daughters of imagination. They were creatures of smile and soundless euphoria, embodied of the sun and the earth and skipping through the realms that we inhabit oh so briefly, a wisp of snap-dragon or a hot breath that shivers in the face of cold logic. Their laughter, sweet and silken soft, is the melody of dreams and the cries of nightingales lost in the falling dusk; and the touch of their skin – damp with youth but hot with sensuous promise, is unbearable and golden.
She was young, and carefree, and though the light never faded from her love-kissed eyes she had a sad understanding that only made her simple grace and her smile palpable, acceptable. She was a child exposed, but not corrupted, and she glowed in her singular philosophy. This child, the detached shadow of a new-made man, conspired with the nymphs as they trespassed through the dunes, played and laughed and basked with them until the strength of the sun drove them to a place beyond even her child’s imagination. She did this in the way her gaze followed the breeze the rest of them only felt, in the way she skipped over the sand (bare and gold, and increasingly hot) or in the way she sometimes walked: too mature, too self-possessed.
She passed into the dunes of Mors as the sun crested the eastern horizon, and by mid-day she had wandered far within the ever-changing maze of sand and sky. The forests of Viride lay well behind her, now, and apart from the occasional shade of a tall, capped dune, there was no respite from the heat of the summer sun. She was alone and seemed supremely unconcerned. Silly creature – have you been alone all this time? She seemed to wander without thought of where she was going. A bird’s eye would have observed she made a more or less straight line toward the Day Court. This was probably coincidence, because there was no apparent logic for her choice of direction on the ground. Her steps were lithe. She flaunted youth and the fragile beauty of a female child: graceful, and mindless of watching eyes. At times she moved to a rhythm that undulated in the air, beneath all sound, and found expression in the touch of her little golden feet to the sun-drenched earth. There was laughter in her eyes and on her tongue, and she spun in a giddy circle as she stepped into the unfettered light of the desert. At other times she marched down the valleys between heaping dunes, chin tucked into chest and feet hitting the sand in a rigid staccato, playing at soldier on parade, the sun gleaming off her metallic coat like tiny shining armor. The sand must have scalded her by midday, but she seemed to relish the touch of it more and more as the day wore on. It was the first time she had seen only sand and sun and sky in all directions since she had left home, so many months ago, and she seemed to become wilder with every step that she took – more reckless and exuberant as the sun bore ever more fiercely down. As the day wore into afternoon the dunes got further apart. She had been humming to herself, the sort of catchy, nonspecific, repetitive tune that is familiar to all children. One tiny, slender ear turned toward a rustle on her right. There was a mound of warm sand, barely a dune really. The song stopped abruptly, leaving a stark silence in its wake, and her face whipped around to the sand. There can be no guessing what she thought she had heard, or seen, but she leapt immediately into giddy action, charging directly up the sandy slope. Without slowing as she reached the top she threw herself, feet slipping on the sand and tiny legs flailing, off the edge of the little dune. She tumbled, rolling over as she slid down the slope of the opposite side, screaming with mirth. She came to rest, fair golden face dusted with sand, at the base of the slope. A few feet further on the sand was giving way to a harder, drier earth, and the stones of the Day Court were not far away. She showed no intention of getting up, but settled herself back into the hot sand, wriggling into a more comfortable rest and pushing her feet down beneath the surface.
And there she waited, like a carved idol just uncovered by the shifting sands of the desert, expectant.
a l a y a y a
OOC: So rusty but so excited. Too excited, obviously. Use your head Faith! Better formatting to follow in future
Posted by: Rhoswen - 04-08-2018, 10:34 AM - Forum: Archives
- No Replies
Rhoswen►
The weak lay hand on what the strong have done ,
At the stagnant pace of a woman slowed by dread it had taken almost a week for Rhoswen to reach the foothills of Veneror, and further days still to ascend through the cloud and the murk toward Novus' cathedral hallowed on high. A heavy fog, born of apprehension and self-loathing, had shadowed her like a lost child, cooing to her through the dark as though in a warped sense it was trying to console her tattered mind. It achieved quite the opposite.
As a child, Rhoswen had dreamed of greatness. Her fantasies had been painted by Aurelian hands that carved and designed an ornate world that was pushed to the edge of excess; narrated by swollen mountains of rhinestone and ruby, halls with tapestries to honour her long bloodred hair, her granite-grey eyes, and armies to raid nations upon her every whim. These utopian dreams had ruled her every waking moment (a salvation from the taunting silence of a goddess supposed to love and guide her) and with everything that she had, Rhoswen once hoped they would come true. With age, came life, and life was nothing like a dream. Life was the aftermath of war: shells of hollow men and caskets for the dead. Life was a long night wrapped in solitude, tied by black ribbon and left at her doorstep - a twisted gift from Caligo to mock her isolation. Life was the grey of a bleak winter sky above a scene she knew so well; an act featuring two thespians (one auburn, one silver) to thunder at each other behind walls of pain and loss and rage.
All so long ago, now.
Rhoswen was not that child anymore. She was not even the woman she had been but two moons ago. From the ashes, the phoenix had not yet risen; her feathers singed, her faith scattered. Everything had changed. If asked just who she might be, Rhoswen did not think she could reply -- for where was the hurricane in her heart, or the blistering forestfire to carry her through the dark? Through the years, the sanguine girl had defined herself by the sunlight that coursed violently through her veins, forever seeking solace from the knowledge that her place in this world did not lie in the tomb of Denocte's ancient crypt. Beyond that, she had realised that it mattered not whether Caligo loved her, for she was loved by a God far superior - in the swell of the desert He had waited to shepherd her home. But the hands of time had revealed a truth that, still, threatened to shatter all that had come before: Solis was not her only love.
Raum. Rhoswen could not bear to think of him, could not bear to look into the crow's eyes and see only the reflection of her failure staring back. He was the chink in her armour, the glacier-ocean to extinguish her fire. Oh, she hated him, hated him so. What a cruel game it was for life to play with her heart in this way; to dangle happiness inches from her grasp only to mutate it into something obscene before her very eyes.
So she had come to the chapel, run to the church, because to stay in that den of shadows a moment longer without hope of redemption was to cast herself in madness, and Rhoswen was not ready to give up yet. The sound of her porcelain hooves against the ancient anointed stone was a hymn to depict her fear: would Solis be waiting to smite her dead? Or, worse still, would she be met with the aching silence that haunted her nightmares, again? As she drew up before the statue of the Sun God, the girl slowed, her fine angular body trembling with the weight of her incandescent emotion. Swirling smoke-filled eyes flashed in the dark, her auburn curls quivering as she dipped her head in reverence. Rhoswen knew her betrayal of Solterra had not been in honour of Denocte -- she was not married to the darkness, or secretly in love with the moon -- no, her treason was named by one man, one man alone, and on this night, Rhoswen vowed to denounce that name forever.
The market is strange to her, too loud and full of life, too bright with colors. She's too used to the darkness, to the silence broken up by nothing more than the ebb and flow of her cold, frozen breaths. Everything here to too alive for her, Isra of the sea-- the girl who did not want to live her life at all.
Deep in her memories, locked away in a chest a certain blackness rattles and shakes. It wants her to recall, that something, to remember what life it was exactly that she didn't want to live. But she only remembers that brine sting of the sea in dreams and what came before that in flashes that are too quick to grasp. They flutter past her eyelids quick as dragonfly wings, shining in the way that blood shines under the moonlight.
A horse yells to another, shrill and demanding, and she forgets what forgotten thing she was trying to remember in the first place.
She digests the smell of this place, rank with sweat despite the coolness of the night. It's a heavy enough smell in her nose that she grinds her teeth together so that she might swallow the soft hint of jasmine and apples that hang like thin, fragile webs of mist in the air. It burns, this place and her eyes are white and wide with fright as she strays back, back, back to the shadows of the stone walls. There she tosses her horn into the blackness before her, tucked away behind the tents and lively horses, to see what monsters she might flesh out.
Already she wants to run back to her corners of heavy dust and the thick silence that soothes her like a hot, summer sea. But her stomach rumbles again and her skin stings where it's pulled too taunt against her ribs and the jut of her hip bones. So on she goes, the past chasing her like a miasma nipping at her heels, on and on and on until there is a barrels of apples that has been left forgotten at the corner of a table.
Quick as a snake she darts for the food, her stomach rumbling like a dragon underwater. But as she moves from the shadows the moon glints on her horn until she sparkles like obsidian and the scales of her belly glitter like a starlight sea.
Isra knows that too much of her is in the light now, it stings.
And she can feel for the first time, like something that hasn't been forgotten. For the eyes on her (from where she cannot tell in the inferno of her fear) are white hot and her skin shivers like a million spiders are crawling all over her. She would rather be that tidal wave of memories locked away deep in the dark of her mind-- something left to fade away and die alone.
She's too afraid too look, to seek out those burning, predator eyes. So she tries to grab an apple anyway (her hunger is too ravenous to be soothed with fear) before sinking back into the blessed and black shadows of the wall.
Her hooves were a monotonous thing as she walked the court, as she stepped over stones and kicked small pebbles away. It hadn't much changed as she'd grown up, including the courtyard. She used to hear tales about this place, about those that had populated the mighty Solterra, but now it seemed so.. barren, somehow. Maybe it was only because she'd been in training with her father most of her life, rather than out running about as a foal would have been doing.
A year away from adulthood and she stood taller than most horses, coming close to her father's height. With her horns, she reached his head easily, the bone dangerous and utilized as a weapon now whenever she had the chance to do so, properly. Tor had taught her well, and in the depths of her soul, she loved her father. Her mother too, and her brothers, but that was the extent of her supposed love.
It went no further than that. Anyone else was merely a pawn or a plaything, something for her to dabble with and toy with when she was bored. A good majority of them were filed like that, even those in the herd itself. But she put on a pretty face and batted those lashes, blinked those pretty purple eyes, and moved on. It had to be that way.
It was all about facades, she had learned. About making a front and working your way from the shadows. It would always be as such.
Another Court, with more spanning it just as the other had. Beautiful lands surrounding a massive structure. Rather than stick to the streets as he had been, Jericho found himself wandering through fields, his hooves brushing past grasses as his bangles jingled softly, his head dropping down and his ears twisting forward, listening. He had yet to meet a single soul, which was... disheartening. Perhaps his freedom also meant solitude, one that would consistently envelop him and hold him tight.
It didn't make him wish for his old life, but it did make him wish that he could at least make some sort of.. friend, or conversation that didn't revolve around specific acts or full of false seduction.
A sigh pushed through his lips, and he meandered near a tree, resting up against the trunk of it and feeling the bark against his pearly white flank. Honestly, he... wasn't sure of what to make of these lands anymore, the ones he had come running to in the dead of night with only a tattered cloak and his jewelry. Now he could see that maybe it wasn't... the place for him. Maybe he belonged back to his past life, where he was held on a chain as a pretty little toy.
It made him shudder in distaste, and he closed pink eyes, ears flinging back suddenly as he breathed out, gnawing his lower lip almost. Perhaps he should give this place a chance, any of these lands. Though he'd already given a few, maybe his third would be the lucky charm.
This was.. perhaps better than wandering the lengths of the Dawn Court, at least for now. Jericho found himself glad to be in a place where there were no eyes on him, no whispers, no other equines to look at him as he strayed past. Nothing to remind him of the life he'd once had.
Here, he only had the sea that lapped at the beach and the call of gulls overhead, even as the breezes brought relief from the summer heat. It's salty in his nose, but it's freedom, something he had clamored for for well over most of his life. Now he was... well. Lost, if anything. Wandering to and fro, lost like a little lamb separated from its herd. The only difference was he was not bleating for help.
If anything, he enjoyed the sensation of being lost, of having no compass to point the way. Perhaps his life would turn out to be something exciting, or maybe he would find a home among others back at the court. His past was his past, and it still pulled at his thoughts every so often, causing his ears to gently fall back and his horned head to turn. He had been shaped by that past, by what happened, but that wasn't going to stop him. It wasn't going to make him bend knee.
He would simply have to get along with life, wouldn't he? Even so, his head dropped, nose pushing at a small seashell that was near his hooves, and the click of the ring against such a fragile piece was audible, even as he flipped it over and revealed the glimmering opalescent sheen that lay under.
Fight Type: Battle Prize: EXP, move on to next round of the tourney Contact Made: I PMed Griffin on Discord and yes I'll share the link once I post it, how silly XD
Character #1:Rostislav Bonded: Hellhound, Damaris Magic: Vexillum earth magic, that will likely discover in this thread XD Armor: Yes ref Weapons: No
Character #2:Acton Bonded: No Magic: Discipuli illusion magic Armor: No Weapons: No
I stand both silent and still on the pocked ground of the Bellum Steppe. Damaris lies at my side. Both of us stare in the direction of Denocte, waiting patiently for our opponent to appear. Though the sun is setting as te day comes to a close, I'm in no rush. Though I know little of Acton's fighting abilities, some sort of zen has taken hold of me, and I feel confident that Damaris and I are the favorites in this battle.
This battle that I have orchestrated. I've been a piss poor Warden these past few months, which is why I'm here today ready to lose a leg for my king and country. (Well that might be a bit of a dramatic exaggeration, but my point is made.) With the continued tensions with the Day Court (I'm beginning to think maybe it isn't all to do with me on that front), and the more recent issues that have come up between Dusk and Night, I can't help but feel that the denizens of Denocte are on the verge of a war on two fronts.
Not that the word "war" has slipped past any loose lips, but I'd rather be prepared.
And being prepared means first figuring out who the hell resides in the Night Court, and on top of that, who the hell is supposed to be fighting for it! Pathetic Warden that I am, I have previously not had the answer to either. But, there are now those that have answered my call, and this tournament is my way of providing a little incentive to get their asses into gear. The first pair: myself, a commander volunteering for duty, and Acton, a more or less unknown quantity. When he arrives, I intend to let colorful stallion throw the first punch. Perhaps give the non-warrior a chance to show his skills before I launch into action!
